"Whatever You Do, Do
1 Corinthians 10:31
Jesus was a Carpenter of Nazareth. It is
impossible to exhaust the significance of the fact that for the greater part of
His life on earth the Son of God toiled with His hands in a workshop, which Henry Drummond said, "is not a place for making engines so much as a
place for making men." A workshop was where our
Lord devoted skill and labor that went into those yokes and ploughs and cottage
tables and they were all rendered as an offering
to God. Even then, Jesus was "about His Father's business," and toil has
been hallowed forever. The
distinction between secular and sacred vanishes. Hard work, whether
manual labor, the duty of the businessman or the everyday duties of the mother
and homemaker, are sacred when done as under the eyes of God and for Him.
Very
dear the cross of shame,
Where
He took the sinner's blame.
But He walked the same high road,
And He bore the
self-same load.
When as Carpenter of
He made common things for God.
Thank
you, Dear Lord Jesus, not only for dying for us, but for showing us how to
live our lives in such a way that, transformed by Your Spirit, they
become a holy offering to God.
~
Selected ~
Shut In …
A little bird am I shut from the fields of air;
And in my
cage I sit and sing to Him who placed me there;
Well
pleased a prisoner to be, because my God it pleases Thee.
My cage
confines me round; abroad I cannot fly;
But though
my wing is closely bound, my heart’s at liberty.
My prison
walls cannot control the flight, the freedom of my soul.
Oh, it is
grand to soar these bolts and bars above
To Him
whose purpose I adore, whose providence I love!
And in Thy
mighty will to find the joy, the freedom of the mind.
Written by Madam Guyon (1648-1717)
From her Castle-prison